It is almost two decades into the new millennium and the international situation is marked by the crisis of the imperialist capitalist system, which is visibly in decadence both in the central and the peripheral countries. In most of them there are strong social polarizations, with political phenom-ena to the right and to the left, with an important imperialist economic counter-offensive that strongly attacks the living conditions of hundreds of millions in all continents, and an important response of workers, popular struggles, feminists and youth, with logical inequalities around the world.
The world is experiencing new tensions and debates that foretell future crises, with US imperial-ism weakened but still dominant and trying to rearrange itself in its dispute with China. It seeks to prevent the Asian giant from having more access to cutting-edge technology and applies tariffs on its products, therefore intensifying the commercial war. This feeds new inter-imperialist frictions and further development of mobilization and political and social phenomena within the United States itself.
The latest movements announced by Trump and his dispute and attempt to impose a new ar-rangement with China -already the second economic power, although not militarily-, as well as the dispute between the US and the EU with Russia -very weak economically but with great mili-tary power-, show the changes that are occurring within world imperialism and the main powers. The US seeks to maintain its weakened hegemony, China aims to advance globally, Russia is trying to regain more regional and world power, and the EU is going through the worst crisis since its creation. They are all examples of the new inter-imperialist context, which foretells more con-flicts and disputes over economic, political and military control at an international level.
In this situation, far from living a new era of prosperity, imperialist capitalism lives a pronounced period of decline. Despite the capitalist restoration produced in the ’90s in Eastern Europe, Chi-na’s re-entry to the world capitalist system and the economic counter-offensive driven globally, imperialist capitalism has not achieved a new cycle of prolonged growth or a qualitative leap of accumulation which would allow a genuine development of the productive forces. On the contra-ry, along with the global crisis and its economic counter-offensive, the conditions of life on the planet are increasingly deteriorating. This phenomenon is even more evident since the crisis of 2008 in the central countries and not only in the dependent countries.
✓ This is the reason why, after a long time, very dynamic resistance movements begin to emerge among the youth and women in the US, why the crisis of bipartisanship, in addition to spawning right-wing phenomena such as Trump, also give birth to other phenomena of an oppo-site sign, such as Sanders, or Corbyn in Great Britain, who wave socialist flags, even if in a dif-fuse manner.
✓ In Europe, the crisis has unmasked and discredited the traditional Social Democratic and Pop-ular Front leaderships like never before. Turned into the executors of the neoliberal agenda, they shamelessly bailed out banks and corporations while plunging entire countries into poverty as millions of workers and popular sectors lost rights acquired through decades of struggle. In con-sequence, far Right alternatives have reemerged, as well as new alternatives to the Left of tradi-tional politics, which, despite all their contradictions, reflect the will to change and resist of entire swaths of the population.
✓ In Latin America, the crisis accelerated the experience of the masses with the new nationalist references of the Left and populists that emerged in the heat of the revolutionary processes at the beginning of the century. At first, this situation was used by the Right to regain power in a number of countries, generating more contradictions and preparing the ground for new and more severe clashes and social convulsions. We are currently witnessing the crisis of the Right-wing governments of Brazil and Argentina.
✓ It also unleashed a series of uprisings and revolutions throughout North Africa, causing changes of such magnitude that they continue to develop despite the new military coups that struck several countries where the Arab Spring had flourished.
Today´s world of crises, wars, social polarization, crisis of regimes and traditional parties and rev-olutions of various types, plus the absence of victorious socialist revolutions, reopened various debates within the currents and organizations of the revolutionary Left and reformist Left. These debates are also experienced with great force in the international Trotskyist movement, which in some countries plays an important role in the class struggle and in the experience of revolution-ary political constructions.
A little over a century from the beginning of the revolutionary era defined by Marxism with the be-ginning of the First World War in 1914, which made capitalism´s decadence and impossibility of improving living conditions in the world visible, and a hundred years from the Russian Revolution, it is essential to rescue the validity of the main theoretical and political pillars that Bolshevism, the first years of the III International and then the IV International defined for a revolutionary strategy throughout the world. It is in the context of this reaffirmation that new situations must be seen and analyzed, incorporating the new elements that are needed, without losing the strategic thread of revolutionary Marxism, Leninism and Trotskyism.
1) The different eras in the rise and fall of capitalism
It is useful to go back over History to remember that Marxism and our current have defined that in the last centuries, since the beginning of modern revolutions, there have been three long-lasting eras.
First there was the era of the bourgeois revolution, which developed in the struggle against feudalism that was already an absolute obstacle for the development of humanity. It lasted ap-proximately two centuries, went through the very important English revolution, the North American and French Revolutions, and ended with the consolidation and extension of the capitalist system and its States at the end of the XVIII Century.
Then came a non-revolutionary era, that of the capitalist boom, where the advance of capital-ism from its States and from society as a whole, and the development of the productive forces predominated. In this era, progress was made in a reformist way in major workers´ and popular gains. At the end of the XIX Century it had the greatest social advances, a huge capitalist accu-mulation and at the same time the emergence of monopolies and imperialism, which would antic-ipate the crisis that was to occur decades later.
And from 1914 we live a revolutionary era, of the necessity of the international socialist revolution. It opened with the start of the First World War, when the stagnation of the productive forces and inter-imperialist disputes that this caused led to the death of millions of people. With the Russian Revolution the first revolutionary triumph is achieved and “the social class that can fulfill the two essential tasks for the productive forces to continue advancing is put into action. Those tasks are abolishing private property and national borders, and establishing a planned global economy. This is so because the working class is international, it is the same in all coun-tries, and cannot be transformed into a new proprietary class that exploits others, for one simple reason: together with the other exploited sectors, it comprises the vast majority of society. In both aspects it is totally different from the classes that previously fulfilled a revolutionary role. The bourgeoisie, for example, was a minority and exploiting class since it was born. The socialist workers revolution is, for the first time in history, the revolution of the majority of the population.” (Nahuel Moreno, Revolutions of the 20th century).
Since then the world lives between wars and revolutions, with misery, famine, the return of medi-eval diseases, with an unequal and combined development in the technological and scientific fields, which shows huge advances but, in the hands of imperialist capitalism, these advances do not benefit the whole of the humanity but only a few sectors in some cases and a clear minority in others. It is the era of the international socialist revolution, because there is no reformist possibility of capitalism driving progress and improving living conditions of humanity as a whole. In fact, in recent decades, the system has advanced qualitatively in putting human life, nature and the en-tire planet at risk with its irrational method of destruction, contamination and looting on a large scale. Meanwhile, in the central countries of Europe and in the US, the quality of life reached in the past decades is receding.
In 2018, we continue in this era of crisis and revolutions, of the socialist revolution as an indis-pensable objective, against the decline of imperialist capitalism that, even with changes and new actors, cannot guarantee steps forward for humanity, nor can these be achieved with a sum of reforms.
That we continue in this era is not synonymous with believing that achieving an international so-cialist revolution is easy, or that victory is assured or that it can solved quickly. On the contrary, in the framework of the capitalist crisis and of many political and union apparatuses, all kinds of leaderships continue to act to avoid a revolutionary course. Hence, no triumphant socialist revo-lution has occurred in the last decades of various revolutions and the fall of governments and re-gimes. Capitalism is in decline, socialist revolution is necessary and possible, but there is a daily and bitter struggle in all countries against leaderships that obstruct the road to revolution.
The problems that impede the advance of the socialist revolution, are not essentially in the objec-tive conditions, but centrally in the subjective ones: the counter-revolutionary and reformist lead-erships, who act in the mass movement and stop the struggles and the advances in the con-sciousness of millions. We act against these leaderships, and that is why we need solid revolu-tionary parties and organizations, to drive these political and social fights everywhere, since the development of revolutionary parties is vital to defeating the parties of the system and helping make big leaps in the consciousness of millions.
That is why we reject the justification-analyzes of currents that define that “there is no relation of forces” to advance with anti-capitalist and socialist measures, that the working class is fragment-ed or that “the conditions are not ripe”,as if there was nothing between the reality and the politics of imperialist capitalism. For Marxism, the conditions are always related to the actions of the leaders, including the actions of the revolutionary leadership. Trotsky explained it well in his text Class, Party and Leadership: “The victory of October constitutes a serious testimony of the ‘ma-turity’ of the proletariat. But it is relative. Some years later, it is this same proletariat that has al-lowed the revolution to be strangled by a bureaucratization that emerged from its own ranks. Vic-tory is not the mature fruit of the ‘maturity’ of the proletariat. Victory is a strategic task. It is neces-sary to use the favorable conditions of a revolutionary crisis in order to mobilize the masses; tak-ing as a starting point the determined level of their ‘maturity’, it is necessary to push them to go forward, to teach them to realize that the enemy is not all-powerful, that it is torn by its contradic-tions, that the panic reigns behind its imposing facade. If the Bolshevik party had not succeeded in carrying out this work, one could not even speak of proletarian revolution. “
We are not objectivists because we do not believe that objective conditions -which have been more than mature for decades at a world level- by themselves, achieve the triumph of the social-ist revolution. Neither are we skeptical, nor do we elaborate self-justifying analyzes to attribute to the mass movement the responsibility of the leaderships that slow down, demoralize and deviate them. We remain attached to the Marxist method of analysis to define revolutionary, transitional, anti-capitalist and socialist politics, to dispute leadership and fundamentally to continue building our revolutionary organizations, without which a better world will be impossible to achieve.
2) The different stages within this revolutionary era
In the development of this era there have been different moments. In fact, the trend has changed several times over the last hundred years. We have gone through several stages, understanding that for us a stage is a moderately long period where the relation of forces between classes are maintained in a certain way. That is to say that a stage changes, when there is a big change in the relation of forces at an international level.
Since the victory of the Bolsheviks to date, we identified four major stages:
✓ The first stage was opened by the Russian Revolution and it was a revolutionary offensive.
✓ The second was opened in the mid-1920s and was counter-revolutionary, with the defeat of the German and Chinese revolutions, the rise of fascism in Italy, the triumph of Hitler in Germany and then the defeat of the Spanish revolution, combined with the defeat of the Bolsheviks and the triumph of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR. That stage lasted until the end of the Sec-ond World War, when the world experienced a new qualitative change.
✓ The third stage was again revolutionary and began with the defeat of fascism and the end of the war, one of the most important revolutionary triumphs of humanity, followed by the expropria-tion of the bourgeoisie in new countries. But the process was detained and not extended to Western Europe by the betrayal of CPs. The enormous contradiction of this historical period was the strengthening of Stalinism. In this stage, the triumph of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions also took place. Then it had a peak of struggle with the French May of ’68 and its repercussion all over the world, the important defeat of US imperialism in Vietnam in the mid-’70s and other im-portant processes. In the ’80s imperialism pressed for a change in policy with Reagan and Thatcher as the political heads of neoliberalism, which would expand in the ’90s.
✓ The fourth was opened with the fall of the former Soviet Union and the bureaucratized work-ers States of Eastern Europe.
The fall of Stalinism and the end of the former USSR
It is clear that the events of the 1990s caused enormous changes that still affect the international situation and debates on the Left about the nature of these changes, the world we have lived in since then and the politics and strategy for today.
The events of the ’90s in the former Soviet Union meant a new and very important change of stage, not era. As we have already explained, the reformist period, where capitalism still had something to offer, died with the First World War and will not come back. That is why the urgent need for the socialist revolution remains.
The complexity of the situation explains that the world stage opened in the 90s had a contradictory sign: on the one hand, positive, because of the extraordinary advance that ending the most terrible counter-revolutionary apparatus known to mankind, Stalinism, meant; and on the other hand, negative, because the cost paid was very high: the capitalist restoration and the chain col-lapse of the bureaucratized workers’ States.
In reality, in the States that it led, Stalinism had long ago destroyed the achievements of the revo-lution and imposed a dictatorial regime that added, to economic hardship, constant repression and a lack of minimal democratic freedoms. It was not a triumphant counter-revolution that opened the way to capitalist restoration, but one democratic revolution after another that ended with the domination of Stalinism in a third of the planet. The confusions in consciousness that decades of Stalinist dictatorship had generated, and the absence of a revolutionary leadership with mass influence and internationally recognized, prevented the canalization of that energy against restoration and towards a regime of workers’ democracy.
The theoretical hypothesis put forward by Moreno and defended by our current did not occur: that the political revolution would develop in two stages. The first one, democratic, where Trotsky-ism would be strengthened and bodies of dual power would emerge, and a second one, where workers mobilized with their revolutionary organizations at the head would establish a regime of workers’ democracy. In those countries, there was also no need for a bloody counter-revolution to restore capitalism. All this caused great confusion in the ranks of our current and the Left in general, opening the way to all kinds of misleading, skeptical, opportunistic and/or sectarian in-terpretations.
What happened was also not what imperialism expected. The capitalist restoration in the third of the planet where the bourgeoisie had been expropriated, and the economic counter-revolution that the neoliberal offensive unleashed on the workers of the entire world, failed to open the way to a new period of capitalist prosperity and sustained development of the productive forces.
The fall of Stalinism destroyed the global order that had emerged after World War II, an order that, to date, imperialism has not been able to re-stabilize. Since then, we have witnessed an in-ternational situation of instability and strong polarization, with political phenomena of all kinds, both to the right as well as to the left and less and less space for the middle ground. And although there are still difficulties and a great backwardness in consciousness, much confusion is tending to slowly dissipate and every day the opportunities to build broad anti-capitalist alternatives and also revolutionary parties grow. What remains decisive in the face of these tasks is the attitude that we, the revolutionaries, adopt.
From the events of 2008 to today
From the beginning of the contradictory stage opened in the 90s till today we´ve lived three dif-ferent periods: a) From the 90s to the 2000s. These were the years of greatest confusion in con-sciousness, when the imperialist ideological campaign that socialism had failed penetrated the most and imperialism advanced the most (restoration and neoliberal reforms); b) From the be-ginning of the century until 2008. The triumphant revolutionary uprisings in Latin America start to reverse the previous period. Although the confusions do not dissipate, we begin to speak again of socialism; c) From 2008 to the present. The crisis penetrates the central countries and com-pletely changes the world political situation.
The crack and collapse of the economy that took place in 2008 ended with the illusions of those who predicted the definitive triumph of the capitalist system. It was a point of inflection that changed the paradigm and, as we said then, “was like the fall of the wall of the capitalists”. Since then, they are the ones who cannot explain or convince that their plans are positive.
In 2008 there was a very big change. This led to some comrades discussing the possibility that there had even been a new stage change. But the reality is that, along with the changes, there were also many points of continuity with the stage opened in the 90s. In principle, seen today, we are inclined to believe that 2008 was a change within the same stage opened with the fall of Sta-linism and the capitalist restoration, which provoked a more favorable relation of forces for the workers because the rise in struggle penetrated in the US and other imperialist countries and the global crisis of the prevailing system became evident.
However, the absence of revolutionary leaderships with mass influence (for this reason, none of the revolutions of the new century have advanced to become triumphant socialist revolutions) has allowed imperialism to continue unloading an economic counter-offensive on workers, with which it seeks to resolve its crisis and stabilize the world situation.
In order to achieve the most scientific analysis possible, we must also recover the category of sit-uation, since within a stage there may be different situations and it is in those that we act and we have to apply our politics.
In short, the resistance of workers and other exploited and oppressed sectors to the neoliberal plans; the crisis of political regimes, parties and traditional leaderships that drove these plans; and the revolutions that took place in Latin America and the Middle East in this new century, are a demonstration that in the 1990s there was not a defeat of such magnitude in the working class that would have blocked all perspective for socialism in the future, imposing for decades or more a correlation of forces completely favorable to the interests of the exploiters, as other international currents believe and therefore have abandoned the struggle for socialism and the construction of revolutionary parties.
3) Theoretical, programmatic and organizational validity of Leninism-Trotskyism
The era and the stage of the current world reaffirm to our understanding three pillars of our theo-retical-political framework: the theory of Permanent Revolution, the method of the Transitional Program and the construction of Leninist revolutionary parties. Of course, as the decades pass and a new century arrived, there are logical updates to be made. We have to face this task ur-gently. But we refer centrally to the validity of the essence of this legacy, which we could summa-rize as follows:
• The socialist revolution has a permanent and international character. Although it starts in a cer-tain country, revolutionary processes must advance permanently, both within its borders with anti-capitalist and socialist measures as well as outside its borders, seeking to extend the revolution. All the revolutions that we saw throughout a century and did not do this, inevitably slowed down, fell back and were finally defeated. The law of revolutions within the framework of imperialist capi-talism is categorical: the process either advances or recedes on an international scale. Hence the need for the international organization of revolutionaries, as the Bolsheviks did as soon as they seized power in Russia, focusing enormous efforts on the foundation of the Third Interna-tional. As Trotsky and his comrades did after the degeneration of the Russian CP, investing time, leaders and cadre in the foundation of the IV International. In the same way today, our militant internationalism, within an era that is still revolutionary, has scientific and political bases.
• There are different types of revolutions, but they are all part of the international socialist revolu-tion. There are democratic revolutions against governments and authoritarian political regimes, and also directly anti-capitalist revolutions; currently there is a feminist revolution and other pro-cesses. But they are all linked together, because to succeed they need to defeat the capitalist and patriarchal system and advance to socialism. That is why we act in each of these processes with concrete policies and with a program of slogans that transitionally try to move the process toward new tasks and not stop.
• The working class is still the social subject of the socialist revolution. Although other op-pressed classes sometimes lead social processes or the working class may lead historical tasks of other classes, the socialist revolution needs the working class to become its main protagonist in order to advance. Along with the working class and other popular sectors, the feminist movement and the youth are currently central motors of most processes of mobilization and new political phenomena. They are therefore very important for our politi-cal intervention and organization.
• Objective, material and economic conditions for the transition from capitalism to socialism have been more than ripe for over a century. “The historical crisis of humanity is reduced to the crisis of revolutionary leadership” (Trotsky, The Transitional Program). It is therefore indispensable not to renounce to building the only political instrument capable of fighting and defeating the treacherous leaderships in the working class, driving the permanent mobilization and the development of democratic organs of self-determination that may arise in revolutionary crisis, and fighting to take power from the bourgeoisie. That instru-ment is the revolutionary party. A Leninist party for combat, formed by professional mili-tants and democratic centralism. Of course this kind of party has nothing to do with the bu-reaucratic and grotesque caricature that Stalinism upheld, and which impregnated even some political currents that claim to be Trotskyist. We defend the broadest internal democ-racy, the right to organize tendencies and factions, and we educate our cadre and mili-tants against dogmatism and in the necessity of thinking freely.
We develop a scientific and Marxist analysis of the current international situation and our policies for each country in which we intervene based on these theoretical and political cornerstones.
4) Mobilization or electoral road. Destruction or reformation of the bourgeois state.
A debate continues among Left organizations -revolutionary, centrist and reformist alike- about whether participation in elections has a tactical or strategic character, and about the role of revo-lutionaries in broad Left political alternatives that accumulate electoral significance.
We believe that all historical experiences with the mechanisms of bourgeois democracy demon-strate that there is no possibility for the Left to achieve its strategic objectives on that path (in South America, Chile in 1972-1973 is the most evident and tragic example). Neither are there possibilities today for the anticapitalist and revolutionary Left to attain governmental power through the electoral road, due to the strength of the media, the parties and institutions of bour-geois regimes, and their influence in the level of class consciousness in the masses.
In fact, in the last decades, each time a vaguely anticapitalist, anti-imperialist or Left nationalist force has advanced electorally, it has begun a process of adaptation, moderating its program and discourse, yielding to the pressure of the regime in an effort to win elections, and distancing itself from a revolutionary perspective.
One example of this is the metamorphosis the PT and Lula underwent, from its original anticapi-talist program, to becoming the executor of neoliberalism in Brazil and the counterweight to the revolutionary advances that the region saw at the turn of the century. This did not impede the Brazilian bourgeoisie from getting rid of them in the worst way once their popular support eroded after implementing anti-working class policies.
As much can be said of Syriza, which had already begun to cede on key issues before its elec-toral victory, and capitulated to the Troika soon after taking office.
The same happens in Podemos, which has moderated its program after its first electoral suc-cess. The same happens as well with the majority in the PSOL, which gives ground to the PT and the Brazilian regime. Also with the Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal and the government with the Socialist Party. It is likely the road the Frente Amplio of Chile or the Movimiento Nuevo Perú will also undertake if they advance electorally.
Another important example is the regression of Bolivarianism, which won its first election defend-ing a Center-Left “Third Way” model, advanced towards Left nationalism under the pressure of mobilization, but -since it didn´t continue to advance in Venezuela, nor internationally- ended up regressing into a bonapartist and repressive state apparatus that has consolidated a state capi-talist model of austerity and extractivism.
The electoral logic of political alternatives dominated by petty-bourgeois or reformist leaderships, always leads them to capitulate to the capitalist regime and not transcend in a revolutionary manner. For this reason, it is important to define that the norm for these broad electoral alterna-tives is that they end up subordinating themselves to the system, and that our policy towards them must combine unity and confrontation for a period and eventual rupture when a qualitative step towards adaptation takes place. If an exceptional case, driven by a strong process of mobi-lization or revolution, should arise, we would consider a specific policy. But the essential question we need to define today is that these electoral alternatives do not aim at our final strategy, and we must state clearly that we don´t see possibilities of integrating eventual governments of this kind of organization.
It is fundamental that -beyond all the tactics we may adopt if we work within this kind of alterna-tives- we not lose sight of the fact that our strategy is very different from that of the leaderships with which we may be temporarily allied. They will moderate their programs in search of bettering their electoral performance and we will maintain our politics even if it doesn´t favor us electorally, because we don´t believe in the electoral road, but in the construction of revolutionary organiza-tions that use elections tactically to strengthen themselves, trusting only in the strategy of perma-nent mobilization, insurrection, taking power and the development of organisms of self-determination of the mass movement.
These questions revive historic debates developed by Marx and Lenin about the bourgeois State. In the last decades of the XX Century and the beginning of this XXI Century, some political currents have resurrected the idea that it is possible to reform the bourgeois State from within or to radicalize bourgeois democracy, believing that, by changing the people who manage the State, or by improving parts of the State´s institutions, it is possible to change the character of the State. Through this reformist and anti-Marxist conception, they abandon the necessity of destroy-ing the bourgeois State as an essential step for achieving revolutionary change.
We still believe that the State represents a social class that rules and has institutions for oppress-ing the other classes. Which is why, given the possibility of taking power, the strategic task is to destroy the institutions of the prevailing State, beginning with the armed forces, the main pillar of ruling class domination, the judicial and political institutions and the State-Church bond.
It is on the basis of destroying the bourgeois State, that we will build new working class, popular, democratic institutions of self-determination, with a transitory character, for the defense of the revolution and its expansion internationally. Never losing sight that our final strategy for the social-ist society that we aspire, is the elimination of all class divisions and, therefore, the elimination of the State of one class over another.
5) The Russian Revolution and its validity
Over a 100 years have passed since the first victorious socialist revolution in 1917. Since then, all kinds of political and social experiences and phenomena have passed. There were more vic-torious revolutions, defeats, bureaucratic degenerations, new expropriations and then crisis and capitalist restoration; regional and world wars, crisis and revolts of all kinds.
Many kinds of parties, currents and organizations have been build on the Left. In the late XX Century false theories arose against the Leninist party in favor of a supposed horizontality, which simply meant an organization with no intention of fighting for State power, nor for destroying it, therefore adopting reformist political and organizational forms, in most cases personalistic and bureaucratic.
The disasters of Stalinism where it ruled and imperialist ideological campaigns generated doubts in various generations about the possibility of defeating capitalism, the validity of revolution and what methods and organizations are necessary for achieving real change.
All the horizontalist, postmodern, reformist and postmarxist theories, like those of Laclau, which are in vogue among tendencies like Podemos, Unidad Ciudadana in Argentina, and others, are based, in one way or another, on these confusions.
Nonetheless, while History has shown time and again that revolutionary change is only possible on the basis of the revolutionary mobilization of the masses and the leadership of some king of centralized organization, all these sectors that promote these false ideologies have nothing to show but failures and impotence before the prevailing powers.
The international tendency that we are building rejects all these revisionist and reactionary theo-ries and defends the validity of the strategy and the methods of the Russian Revolution and of Bolshevism, as well as our own rich history in Latin American Trotskyism. We believe in that lega-cy and continue to fight for the same objective. We recognize that it isn´t an easy path and that victory is not assured. It´s a political struggle, a class struggle and a struggle of ideas. We also understand that every process and phenomenon is different and has its particularities and calls for necessary actualizations and elaborations, but the common strategy of fighting to destroy the world capitalist system, its States, regimes, institutions, parties and bureaucracies that sustain it, remains the same.
For these reasons we consider that, in addition to building revolutionary parties in individual countries, it is indispensable to organize revolutionaries internationally, at a level above all na-tional organizations. This is why we place the organization of our international tendency as an imperative priority, and interact, from this framework, with other organizations and comrades with whom we have agreements and differences. We intend to strengthen our intervention and spread our political opinions and proposals in all our countries from our international tendency. We know that, beyond logical differences in the state of construction in each country (party, cur-rent or founding group), the political goal is the same: to strengthen the building of cadre and leadership teams in order to consolidate Leninist and Trotskyist revolutionary parties everywhere, as the strategic and indispensable task.
6) The revolutionary party
Almost 30 years have passed since the collapse of Stalinism as a counterrevolutionary central-ized world apparatus. Although there are still active forces with some level of regional influence, such as the Cuban government or filo-Stalinist parties in various countries.
Unlike the previous stage of the class struggle, none of the revolutions that have taken place since the fall of the Soviet Union have expropriated the bourgeoisie, nor has the leadership of any revolution gone beyond the limits of its program and class. The process that advanced the most was perhaps the one lead by Chavez, though it never surpassed the limits of capitalism, and, for this very reason, ended up retreating and falling into the current catastrophe.
The disappearance of Stalinism as a world apparatus and the consequential submission to the capitalist system of all the petty-bourgeois, bureaucratic, Left nationalist, “progressive”, or “com-munist” leaderships, put an end to the stage in which the “the exception” had become “the norm”.
We must therefore conclude that without the insurrectional mobilization of the working class, revolutionary crisis, democratic organs of dual power and a revolutionary party with mass influ-ence, it will not be possible to defeat capitalism and advance towards socialism.
Further, in this stage it will be harder to achieve lasting democratic or social partial victories with-out the presence of strong revolutionary parties. Hence the importance of not forgetting our strat-egy. The center of our orientation is placed in discussing how to advance in the building of our revolutionary groups and parties.
The validity of a series of tactics
Besides having adequate policies, the party is built applying different tactics.
We won´t develop here the necessity of united actions with other labor, political, social, feminist or human rights leaderships, in order to face attacks on workers, women, youth or other social sectors by governments, bosses or the bureaucracy; or attacks on democratic liberties or imperi-alist attacks which may imply carrying out actions in which bourgeois sectors might participate. What is important is to know that these kinds of interventions are episodic and we don´t refrain from criticizing the reformist, petty-bourgeois or bourgeois leaderships we may be mobilizing with, even during the united action. That is, we apply what we call a policy of unity-confrontation.
Something entirely different is the workers´ united front. This tactic is directed at opportunist or sectarian workers´ parties. It becomes important when the working class is attacked or there is a real danger of a coup. It has the double objective of strengthening the workers´ response and, at the same time, exposing the opportunists´ and reformists´ inconsistency. United fronts tend to last longer than united actions and include common spaces of organization, although we always maintain political independence and criticize our circumstantial allies´ inconsistencies. Unions and other levels of labor organization are also workers´ united fronts, since we coexist with other reformist currents in them.
Campism. The clashes of some governments with imperialist powers (Maduro, Al Assad), or of treacherous leaderships with reactionary sectors of he bourgeoisie (Lula), or of populists in de-cline (Kirchnerism, Evo Morales), are used by opportunists to try to silence all criticism towards them, accusing those who confront them of accomplices of imperialism or of aiding the interests of the Right. It is fundamental not to cede to these pressures and to maintain the starkest criticism of the crimes they commit, among other things because it´s their actions that end up strengthen-ing the Right and imperialism.
Broad “anticapitalist” parties
The fiasco of Stalinism fiasco since the fall of the Soviet Union, the terminal crisis of social democ-racy because of their active role in favor of neoliberal policies, the failure of nationalist govern-ments in this new century and the economic counter-revolution that governments have been car-rying out against the working class for years -to which we should add the weakness of Trotsky-ism in most countries- have created new political-electoral phenomena out of vaguely anti-imperialist and anticapitalist broad regroupments. Despite the strategic limitations of these groups and the petty-bourgeois and non-revolutionary character of the leaderships of these processes, we consider that it is a sectarian error -frequent in some organizations that also proclaim them-selves Trotskyist- to refuse on principle to participate in these experiences and work within them for a period of time to reach the workers and youth that are attracted to them.
Concretely, we do not consider mistaken the tactic of working for some time within Podemos in Spain, the Bloco de Esquerda en Portugal, Die Linke in Germany or even Syriza in its begin-nings, in order to try to build revolutionary tendencies within those broad constructions. What is mistaken is to fall in line behind the reformist leaderships of those processes, to not have publicly differentiated policies, to abandon the strategy of building the revolutionary party or to dissolve it within the broad construction.
Although there is no model and the alternatives that have emerged are not the same in every country, we can reach the same conclusion about participating in the construction of the PSOL in Brazil, the politics carried out by Marea Socialista within the PSUV in Venezuela, or adopting poli-cies towards phenomena like the Frente Amplio in Chile or the Movimiento Nuevo Perú.
In the current stage, it won´t be possible to make qualitative advances in our construction in many countries, or, given the case, to dispute mass influence, without adopting broad tactics to-wards new arising phenomena or policies aimed at reaching out to those with expectations on leaders such as Sanders or Corbyn. This doesn’t mean that, in certain conditions, the most effec-tive tactic could be the unity of Trotskyism or the radical Left. In Argentina, for example, the nec-essary unity -which does not take shape due to the refusal of the sectarian currents- is between the FIT and Izquierda al Frente, and calling on the rest of the organic, independent and social Left to join.
When we approach this kind of experiences, which are perfectly valid in this period of, we have to be clear about their limitations and the fact that this tactic will be temporary. Using the analogy of a train that has many stops before arriving at its final destiny, which would be the international so-cialist revolution in our case, we can affirm that this kind of alternatives can play a progressive role until a certain point of the trip, and then they are most likely to change character and become reactionary. Sooner rather than later, our own program will come into contradiction with the dy-namic taken by the reformist components, and those constructions will explode, or we’ll need to break with them. What the tactic is all about, is taking advantage of the opportunities presented before, during and after, in order to strengthen our revolutionary organization.
Unity with revolutionaries
We are living a stage of important changes, in which the class struggle intensifies and produces regroupments, ruptures and rearrangements in many of the national and international organiza-tions of the revolutionary Left.
In many countries, the construction or strengthening of our groups or parties will depend on bold politics and orientations in order to join with different groups of revolutionaries that come from other organizational experiences, and who, based on agreements on shared principles, are will-ing to join an international organization like the one we are beginning to build.
In other countries, building sections of our network may be the result of agreements with labor, youth or feminist currents, or from a combination of all of them, who, based on their experience in the class struggle and on programmatic agreements, are willing to build revolutionary parties linked to the Anticapitalist Network,
Part of our orientation has to be aimed at exploring these and other opportunities in order to ad-vance in our construction.
Youth, feminism and dissidence
Our parties are built with the vanguard that arises out of each moment of the class struggle. To-day, there’s a world-wide sexual dissidence and feminist revolution, focused on the youth, that we must prioritize in every country, utilizing all possible campaigns, groupings, materials and initi-atives to attract its best exponents.
This process has put issues like the legalization of abortion, gender salaries and opportunities equality, gender violence and abuse, sexual freedom on the table. It´s a radical process that readily questions capitalism, as the promoter of patriarchy and the Church, with its medieval doc-trines. Intervening decidedly with all our available forces in this process where it has taken mass proportions is essential for taking advantage of the huge opportunity to organize militants and build the cadre structure we need to develop our parties.
The youth, especially students, has always been a fundamental source of cadre for building our tendency. We must therefore orient ourselves decisively towards the youth in all our countries in order to reach an accumulation of militants important enough to achieve a qualitative advance in our construction.
7) Anticapitalist Network
The sectarian course taken by the LIT (International League of Workers) and then the UIT (International Workers´ Unity), convinced us years ago to attempt a regroupment of revolutionary forces based on an orientation of intervention in the class struggle that, without isolating us from the processes, would allow us to build our organizations independently and relate to others with the same political interest at an international level. Along the way, we have reunited with old com-rades, met new ones, strengthened closer ties with some groups and clarified agreements and differences with others.
We intend to maintain our status as a permanent observer in the US of the Fourth International, though it´s a fact that our differences with the comrades of the US are important, some of them strategic, as was evidenced at the last World Congress. Unfortunately, the comrades of the Bra-zilian MES, with whom we jointly undertook our current relation with the US, decided to fully inte-grate themselves in the US, after manifesting total agreement with them. This change requires reorganizing our forces.
Concretely, we plan on devoting our energies to building an international network with all those with whom have developed bonds of trust based on theoretical and political agreements, and a common intervention in the class struggle throughout these past years. Our starting point is the formation of Anticapitalist Network. We have no intention of closing in on ourselves. On the contrary: with the organization our forces as a point of departure, we aim to carry out an active orientation, to relate to broad sectors and connect with all the militants, organizations, parties and currents with whom we can find common points of intervention and agreements and raise the possibility of being part of the same organization.
Buenos Aires, may of 2018